4 Tips on Running an International PPC Campaign

Running an international PPC campaign will have its challenges beyond the obstacles that you may run into when running a PPC campaign in just English. The importance of understanding the markets and customers outside of the US are only going to further help you see a strong ROI. Below are a few tips to help you get started on running your own foreign language PPC campaign…

Do your keyword research and pick the right ones

Sometimes it’s easy to think that a direct machine translation is going to work well. This isn’t always the case. You will want to work with linguists and professional translators to ensure that wherever it is you plan to target your campaign – you can speak the exact same way that people in this region do. Considering the cultural context of the keywords is going to play a huge role in your campaign’s success. In this case, it is okay to reach out to an in-country SEO expert to give you the best guidance.

Decide which search engines you will be using

Sure, it’d be nice to think that Google was the one and only, but this isn’t true. For example, Yandex (Russia’s search engine) continues to beat out Google because of its focus on the Russian language and building algorithms to be able to rank and read sites in this language. Thus, delivering search results relevant to what users are searching for.

Copywriting is crucial to driving results

So now that you’ve decided which keywords you’ll be using along with the search engines – you should be ready to launch, right? Not quite yet. Remember you only have so many characters to work with and now have to creatively persuade people to click on your ad. Again, I would recommend working with linguists and professional translators who can help you write accurate expressions and tones. This part goes beyond just the actual ad, it transcends into your landing page as well.

Monitor and make improvements where needed

It’s going to feel like a huge relief after going through the set up processes, but now you have to continue managing your campaign. Continual monitoring of what it is that your customers are doing or not doing, will need to be kept track of so that you know where you need to focus your efforts. More specifically, you can make the necessary improvements for relevancy and targeting purposes.

What now?

For starters, don’t expect immediate results. However, know that “English is rapidly being overtaken as the lingua franca of the web, as foreign languages are seeing massive growths in online use. For instance, Chinese use online grew by 755% and Arabic by 2064% between 2000 and 2008, compared to a 204% growth for English. That means that if you want to be a part of the biggest growth markets online, you need to think beyond English.” – Search Engine Journal, Christian Arno

About the Author

Suttida is the SEM Manager at Wordbank located in Denver, CO. Wordbank is a leading marketing translation and localization company, specializing in global marketing communications. We set the standard for the cultural adaptation of advertising and marketing materials in over 140 languages, focusing to also help our clients with International SEM & SEO Services in any language.